Apr 9, 2013

I was working at my desk on a Sunday afternoon, when I got a
call from a number I didn’t recognize,

“Hello, I am ____ and I am calling about _____ who has used
you as a reference for some home repair work. What can you tell me about him?
Did he do good work for you?”

How many of us have provided a reference in the past or been
on the other end and called and requested a reference for someone we were
interviewing or considering for a job or project? Conducting such “due
diligence” seems reasonable and prudent and is a well established part of the
service sales process.

Testimonials--a
special type of reference

As a provider of paid services, your ability to have former or
current customers privately validate your value to their organizations is
important. In fact, it may be the deciding factor in getting a purchase order
or engagement. But getting your references to put their names to a few
sentences that sing your praises and permission to publish their references on
your website, review sites, and in social media is a special level of
endorsement. It’s called a “testimonial,” and I believe that the most
successful service businesses use them early and often to introduce themselves,
help potential customers feel comfortable, and inspire trust. In other words, testimonials
are invaluable at every stage of the service buying process. Surprisingly, many
service businesses have no process in place to collect, compile, refresh, and
publish their testimonials.

In a study conducted by a Dutch consulting firm, potential
customers were willing to pay more for a specific service when it was presented
with effective testimonials.Campaigns built around testimonials are
highly effective. Used as part of a professional sales person’s toolkit, they increase
success.

Does your chewing
gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?

In my opinion, there are three things that you, as a key
player in a service business, need to keep in mind about testimonials:

They
have a shelf life, especially if you use them often

Real
people are behind them, so you should stay connected with them

Don’t
keep them a secret

OK—so testimonials
aren’t chewing gum, but they DO lose their flavor

Asking customers how they liked their service or simply
sending them a note and asking them to comment on their service experience does
your customers a disservice. A hands-off approach may be a fine technique for
quality assurance for internal use only. But many of your customers may be busy and generally
not able to devote the time desirable for crafting an effective 2-3 sentence
testimonial. Asking them to write something or trying to guilt them into
responding and then posting their testimonials all over the internet with their
name attached may embarrass them if there are inadvertent errors in grammar or
spelling. And let’s not forget content!You want your testimonials to deliver the specific messages that will
resonate with your customers. I think it is better to work with the people
you’ve asked to provide testimonials and take the time to assure those
testimonials will serve you well. A high-touch approach to crafting
testimonials reflects well on the long-term customer relationships.

You can lose your
spot on their Shelf of Mind through inattention

Since you want customers with whom you have a long-term positive
relationship to let you use their names and thoughts to promote your services,
you need to stay connected with these customers. Encourage them to “like” your business
Facebook page, subscribe to your YouTube Channel, and follow you on Twitter. Not
into Internet stuff? Well, how about a quarterly seasonally appropriate
greeting card--maybe with a free latte card enclosed—and a “thank you” for
their ongoing help in growing your business. By the way, keeping in “loose
touch” with these valuable contacts helps to assure your business a spot on
their shelf of mind—and your name on their lips when someone asks about a good
provider of your service.

Like bees around
fruit trees, testimonials spread the good word

In days gone by, testimonials were used by sales reps to bolster
presentations and facilitate sales. They could be put in context and additional
details could be added verbally to facilitate their relevance to a specific
sales situation. Today, regardless of where they are first posted (website,
Yelp, Google Reviews), testimonials are replicated throughout the social web, where
they remain searchable for years. Once on the internet in a few select places,
other hands can spread the word and make testimonials about your service accessible
to all. Consequently, these testimonials must be effective. Your potential
customer sees only what is on the page, so a testimonial must be well-crafted and unambiguous.

It is a short leap from “unambiguous” to “contrived,” and
it’s no surprise that a premium is placed on testimonials that can be verified
as coming from real customers and not as planted by paid “friends” of a
business. Review sites like YELP have developed sophisticated software techniques
for identifying genuine testimonials from faked ones.

Use an Impartial
3rd party to collect your testimonials?

Since testimonials are widely viewed as critical—heard of Angie’s
List?--many businesses have begun to turn to third parties to collect and verify
testimonials, both for logistic and practical reasons and because customers
tend to trust testimonials that they can confirm are truthful.

Amazon Verified Purchase

Several years ago, Amazon started adding the tag line “Amazon
Verified purchase” to reviews to confirm that the reviewer had actually bought
the product from Amazon about which the reviewer contributed a testimonial. Since
that time, several firms have developed third party solutions that use
the power of the internet to collect, vet, and publish testimonials, with
generally good results for their customers.

According to Terry Doland, of Express Printing of Sunnyvale, CAand a local reseller of a third party solution called, Mpact Magic , “…by allowing our
customer’s customer to control all aspects of testimonial creation and
posting, we increase the value and the utility of the reference.”

Whether you do it yourself or hire someone else to do it, ask
your customers to help you market your service business by sharing their
experience of buying and using your service. Afterwards, stay in touch with these
customers who provide testimonials and share with them the good news about your
business with prospects, on networks, and in your channels.